Role of the Medial Posterior Parietal Cortex in Orchestrating Attention and Reaching.

The interplay between attention, alertness, and motor planning is crucial for our manual interactions. To investigate the neural bases of this interaction and challenge the views that attention cannot be disentangled from motor planning, we instructed human volunteers of both sexes to plan and execute reaching movements while attending to the target, while attending elsewhere, or without constraining attention. We recorded reaction times to reach initiation and pupil diameter and interfered with the functions of the medial posterior parietal cortex (mPPC) with online repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation to test the causal role of this cortical region in the interplay between spatial attention and reaching.

Similar neural states, but dissimilar decoding patterns for motor control in parietal cortex.

Discrete neural states are associated with reaching movements across the fronto-parietal network. Here, the Hidden Markov Model (HMM) applied to spiking activity of the somato-motor parietal area PE revealed a sequence of states similar to those of the contiguous visuomotor areas PEc and V6A. Using a coupled clustering and decoding approach, we proved that these neural states carried spatiotemporal information regarding behaviour in all three posterior parietal areas.

Neurophysiological recordings from parietal areas of macaque brain during an instructed-delay reaching task.

Facilitating data sharing in scientific research, especially in the domain of animal studies, holds immense value, particularly in mitigating distress and enhancing the efficiency of data collection. This study unveils a meticulously curated collection of neural activity data extracted from six electrophysiological datasets recorded from three parietal areas (V6A, PEc, PE) of two Macaca fascicularis during an instructed-delay foveated reaching task. This valuable resource is now accessible to the public, featuring spike timestamps, behavioural event timings and supplementary metadata, all presented alongside a comprehensive description of the encompassing structure.

Visual sensitivity at the service of action control in posterior parietal cortex.

The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) serves as a crucial hub for the integration of sensory with motor cues related to voluntary actions. Visual input is used in different ways along the dorsomedial and the dorsolateral visual pathways. Here we focus on the dorsomedial pathway and recognize a visual representation at the service of action control.

Modulation of reaching by spatial attention.

Attention is needed to perform goal-directed vision-guided movements. We investigated whether the direction of covert attention modulates movement outcomes and dynamics. Right-handed and left-handed volunteers attended to a spatial location while planning a reach toward the same hemifield, the opposite one, or planned a reach without constraining attention.